Saturday, August 13, 2016

Trolley Books are delighted to announce that applications are now open for the inaugural Philip Jones Griffiths Award from The Philip Jones Griffiths Foundation. The award is for documentary photography and must be used to complete a body of work, regardless of what stage the project is in, from a proposal to nearing completion. The subject matter must be related to issues of social and political importance. The photographer will receive £10,000.

The Philip Jones Griffiths Foundation was set up by Philip shortly after he found out he had cancer in 2000, with the aim of preserving his work to inspire future generations and as a way to actively help photojournalists cover the stories that needed to be told. Since his death in 2008 the foundation has been run by his two daughters Katherine Holden and Fanny Ferrato.
The Philip Jones Griffiths Award will be annual and judged by a mixture of highly respected professionals and renowned photographers.

Philip published three books with Trolley. Agent Orange - Collateral Damage in Viet Nam (2003), Viet Nam at Peace (2005) and Recollections (2008), and was close to Trolley’s late publisher Gigi Giannuzzi. Hannah Watson from Trolley will be one of the judges of the inaugural award.
The deadline for the applications is October 10th 2016, with the winner announced on November 15th 2016.

An after-thought: In 1998 Philip Jones Griffiths Award came to Auckland on a Magnum assignment to shoot pictures for a Heinz Corporation annual report. Philip contacted me and asked if I would assist him, hire lighting and so on. Which I did. The shoot involved making a picture of a high-profile NZ food writer in her kitchen. I helped Philip set up and in doing so was stand-in for the writer. Below is one of the polaroid test shots Philip made. It seemed totally bizarre that this amazing photographer was here in New Zealand, well, having to shoot crap. His next stop was Melbourne where he was to shoot cat food!
After the shoot was wrapped Philip came home to my place, sitting in my kitchen we chewed-the-fact errrr fat. Over a couple of hours he systematically (and amusingly) demolished more than a handful of Magnum photographers. Philip Jones Griffiths struck me as a highly principled, larger-than-life individual with a huge intellect. And a great photographer. Sorely missed.

About Me

My pictures explore the strange anthropology of cities. The unusual and overlooked in the human landscape.
I am asking the viewer to question the idea that photographs as documents are complete representations of subject.
I'm interested in the universality of life and the idea of parallel lives - when one thing is happening here, something else is happening over there. The democracy of non-places fascinates me, in the knowledge that inevitably nothing is as it seems.
I work and live between Auckland and Paris.
http://harveybenge.com/
email:harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz